Category: Crime

I’ve been a Seth Damoose fan since I first saw his art. There’s a joy to everything Seth draws. I was extremely happy when Seth announced he was taking a few sketch commissions through the mail. I jumped on board with a request for Jack Carter and John Wick. As you can see, Seth came through like a champ.

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Covert Media is also producing my screenplay adaptation of Victor Gischler‘s Edgar-nominated novel GUN MONKEYS , which will be directed by Simon Brand. The development history of GUN MONKEYS goes back years. I optioned the book myself, wrote the script on spec, and for a long while it was set up with actor Kevin Costner and director Ryuhei Kitamura. That project came real close to getting made…and then fell apart. A new producing team came on board, offers are going out to big-name actors now, and we’re on track to shoot in late 2017/early 2018.

Back in September, Simon shot an action scene from my script as a camera/lighting test…and I’ve just been given the okay to share it now that he’s posted it on his site. The key parts are played by his friends and it has a voice-over that isn’t in the script — I wrote it just for this so that the action makes sense out of context. I think the footage looks terrific. Here it is. I hope you like it!

I dig everything about this test footage. Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler is an excellent book. Kudos to Lee Goldberg for having the faith in it and himself to option the book, write the spec script and stick with it until a deal was made.

Goldberg managed in a short video that is mostly action to create a main character that we care about, a feeling that everyone in the clip has a backstory, plus he gives us a twist at the end not only in the climax but how things are resolved. Bravo, Lee Goldberg!

My hat is also off to director, Simon Brand and director of photography, Pedro Luque. I certainly hope that they will work together to create this feature film. I don’t know who the actors are in the Gun Monkeys test but I’d like to see more of the actors playing Charlie and Milt.

I’ll be in line to get a ticket when Gun Monkeys hits the big screen and will keep us posted on any updates.

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By now you’ve probably seen the poster and trailer for the new Death Wish movie coming out on November 22nd. I’ll post my thoughts after the trailer.

I’m glad to see Willis starring in a feature (especially one heading to the big screen). I’m a long-time Bruce Willis fan. For the last few years we’ve seen him regulated to supporting roles with top billing in limited or direct-to-video releases. So, yeah, it’s good to see him back.

Let’s talk the remake now. First of all, why? The original Death Wish with Charles Bronson is a classic. Perhaps the only (or best) reason is that if successful the remake could be a hit and spawn sequels.

In the original Bronson was an architect. Making Willis a doctor does provide more conflict for the character. After all, he did take an oath to save lives not end them. Other than that it seems we have the same peaceful man turned into a killing machine. In one earlier version of the script the idea was that the Bronson/Willis character would be a peaceful man but after his family’s murder we learn that he was once a violent gang member. THAT could have been an interesting back story.

In the original film, Bronson’s wife and daughter get raped, his wife murdered and his daughter left in a coma with little hope of recovery. Bronson has lost everything and gained a death wish. In the remake Willis’ daughter appears well on the road to recovery. Willis has something to live for. For him to just go out to kill muggers treads the line of wanting to be a hero. That gives the film a different vibe which still can work if done correctly.

The poster is not bad. Not great and definitely has an 80’s feel with the tagline…

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I love Jason LaTour’s cover for Southern Bastards #17. Is THAT Burt Reynolds or just a guy who looks like him? Either way, I’m in. Southern Bastards is one of the best comics being published these days.

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I dig everything about Shawn McGuan’s faux Swann & Wrench faux paperback cover. If you tuned in to the last season of Fargo, you’re probably right there with me.

McGuan nailed it perfectly. Not only did he capture the likenesses, but the beat-up look of the book, the font, the title (Two Against Unfathomable Pinheadery) and the fact that he included the line, A New Swango & Wrench Adventure. Sign me up for THAT paperback series!

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Stephan Franck is currently the Head of Story for Lionsgate’s Playmobile. Franck also served as supervising animator on The Iron Giant and key story contributor to Despicable Me, and co-created the award-winning animated series Corbeil & Bernie. When Franck needs a break from animation, he works on his fantastic graphic novel series, Silver.

Silver is a…

…a high-concept, super fun genre-blender, featuring pulp-era conmen and a troubled female vampire-hunter as they try to steal a mystical treasure from a castle full of vampires — what could go wrong with that plan?!

As I posted here, Franck’s Kickstarter for Silver 3 is now live. I’m on board. If Silver sounds like your kind of fun, please consider joining.

4. “No Country For Old Men” (2007)
Even knowing the high quality of the Coen Brothers’ work in general, and knowing their love for crime fiction, no one was quite prepared for “No Country For Old Men.” Their first adaptation (it’s adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s novel), it maintained the greatest qualities of their earlier work — dry wit, careful plotting, unforgettable characters, bursts of ultraviolence — but with a darker, more apocalyptic mood than ever before. Even though its story of the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong, and the men pursuing the money that Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) has taken, is set in 1980s Texas, it somehow feels predictive of the world that we’ve ended up in a decade later in some strange ways, and we’re sure it’ll only continue to resonate further over time.

33. “John Wick” (2014)/“John Wick: Chapter 2” (2017)
We couldn’t pick between the two Keanu Reeves-reviving badass-fests here: the first has a purity to it, plus Willem Dafoe and that adorable puppy for the first reel, the second embellishes and extrapolates the film’s strange world and amps the arthouse-action vibe up to eleven. And while they’re action movies first and foremost, they’re also definitely crime films, Chad Stahelski and David Leitch building a fascinating pulp-comic-book underworld more compelling, and full of more intriguing characters and rules, than we’ve seen in this genre for a while. Plus, of course, it has Reeves at his taciturn, quietly psychotic best, it looks beautiful, and it has some of the best shootout sequences since Sam Peckinpah shuffled off the mortal coil. Bring on ‘Chapter 3,’ as soon as humanly possible.

39. “A History Of Violence” (2005)
The first and best of the two crime pics that David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen made together back-to-back, “A History Of Violence” doesn’t initially seem like the sort of thing that the body-horror master would make, but like its lead character, soon reveals itself to have all kinds lurking under the surface. Based on a graphic novel, it sees Tom, a seemingly ordinary family man (Mortensen) praised as a hero after killing two men trying to rob his diner, only for a mysterious, scarred criminal (Ed Harris) to turn up and claim that Tom has a past, and that these were far from the first people he’d killed. Cronenberg and his cast (particularly William Hurt, whose Oscar-nominated supporting turn can practically be seen from space) don’t hide from the comic book nature of the material, but for all the ultraviolence (and two of the most narratively effective sex scenes in history), there’s something deeply human here, about an attempt to escape your nature, and whether there really are second acts in American life.